Maybe it was an import-export rivalry that got excessive in terms of oneupmanship.

It was racism, pure and simple. The Irish (and Highland Scots) were sub-human, less than the English. 'Celts' if you like were seen as a problem,
their language was banned, their culture destroyed (crofters). Import-export rivalry is a very generous phrase, the truth was much simpler and much
uglier I'm afraid.

Yup, i did senior school in England in the 80's and early 90's. We touched on it in A level History (it fell just outside of the time range, but our
teacher was Irish!), covered it in A level British Government and Politics (same teacher, we had some great discussions thanks to him, great teacher
was Mr Phelan), and did A LOT of Seamus Heaney poetry in English Lit too, so heaps about the famine there too.

Living in Ireland (Belfast) I can say that the only history taught on this subject followed the narrative of the potatoe blight being the reason for
the deaths. Our textbooks showed no such hint of this take on history, and being a naive kid I accepted it. Also there were more recent British war
crimes happening which preoccupied your anger and sense of injustice.
When it comes down to it, all I can say and feel is pity and sorrow for those poor souls who starved and died of disease and had to watch their
children waste away without being able to do a Danny thing to take away their agony.
But then again, we ALL are openly allowing the same thing to happen on a much wider scale in africa. Easy way is either not to think about it or
donate a few pounds to charity and fool yourself into believing you have done all you can. Shame on all of us. Especially me.

Just got back from a trip to Ireland, older fella gave us a walking tour of the town, when he found out we were from oklahoma he insisted on telling
us how tge Choctaw during the famine raised nearly 10k pounds and moved it through the Methodist church so the money would go to keeping the soup
lines working.

was kind of neat to hear about something like that from the town of drogheda, and the Methodist church is still there..

Too true, most of the Hebridean side of my family left for a better life in Canada and Australia around WW1, and as a young girl my Gran (who was left
behind) was beaten in her first school for not speaking English.

Even when what was left of her family moved to Glasgow when she was a late teenager, they were treated with great prejudice and disdain as Gaels and
the only home they could get was a stinking room in the tenements of Rotten Row. These were not poor or uneducated people either, her uncle who was
the patriarch was a School Master and my gran had a rare and hard fought for place as a trainee nurse.

A very ugly business indeed - and they got off so lightly compared to many others.

My mother's family were crofters, and are still lucky enough to have the croft just now. They never left and I wish I could go back in time to meet
my great, great, great granny and hear her stories.
They were just across the water from you on the mainland! The clearances is one of the subjects my mother drummed into us when we were wee, lest we
forget.

I was reading recently about Welsh kids who were beaten for speaking Welsh in class, with a Welsh Knot, a rope tied to a bit of wood. This must have
been around the same time as your Gran was being 'taught' how to speak properly, poor soul.

I remember being taught about the Potato Famine in school (US circa 1995) but they seem to have left out the part about Free Trade and that they were
only allowed to eat the potatos even though they grew plenty of other food with their own hands. I seem to remember the way they put it was that
potatos made up the bulk of their sustenance, because they were cheap or something, not because there was some law saying so and the lords were not
willing to bend the rule even in a state of emergency.

I did recently find out the truth about this though, on another ats thread.

Another thing I found out about the Irish pretty recently was that they were slaves in the American colonies. Not a lot of people realize there were
white slaves in America.

I`ve got roots in the Scot/Irish peoples that emigrated to the U.S. about that time, as horrible as it was then had it not happened I probably
wouldn`t have existed here. The article does explain my deep seeded hatred for tyrannical, pompous A-holes that presume to be "in charge".

a reply to: Telos
I just watched a program about the British India Genocide, there's some pretty heinous photos of it... another thing blotted out by history books,
the colonies were far more bloody than wars. The British were more racist than the Nazis, and they got wealthy selling drugs to countries, and so on.
Just criminals, I tell ya

Britain from time immemorial has had various races and cultures (Takitus)... I dont get the feelings of superiority there

If you went to school in Britain we learned about life in the Middle Ages and my GCE in it was about the tudors and Stuarts. In short safe subjects,
probably because of the chance of people asking too many questions and saying what they think. British Government never told/tells the public the
truth anyway and also controls what's taught in schools.

Fair play though ordinary Brits had a terrible time with poverty the government even set up penal colonies to send men to who took a sheep to feed
starving families with, so no one think for one minute life here was a picnic. People suffered because of the wealth being held by the aristocracy
and especially royals (and you could also add the church). When entrepreneurs from ordinary stock made money, they were 'advised' to join the
aristocracy and become 'fine Gentlemen'. Its how the class war has survived. The means of it though are written in blood and the Irish had it bad
but also the church could have done more there.

a reply to: Telos
Really Telos, it's hardly "Britain's secret history" at all, I was taught well about it at school in 1980's south Wales, and there's even a Wiki which
covers it quite well, especially the bit about Ireland actually exporting plenty of food under armed British guard, food crops which would have fed
the starving.
I was taught all this in school as part of our British history, but I feel no shame for any of it. I'm from a heritage of poor Cornish tin miners, and
poor Welsh coal miners, who had # all to do with the decisions of the rich elite in the 1800's.
Same as I have # all to do with the decisions of the rich elite today.

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